To hear Peter King lard on Irishness as if he were a hot buttered bun, saying he will outlaw singing the National Anthem in anything but English is richly ironic.
England outlawed the speaking of Irish. The British tune of our anthem became a drinking song in Ireland. So while Irish lads, the brave and the free, speaking only English, were being bombarded at Ft. McHenry, Francis Scott Key, ardent opponent to the War of 1812, set his patriotic words to a bowdlerized English tune desecrated by Irishmen. No doubt Peter King would have bellowed for a law against an anti-war opponent writing our national anthem.
It really didn't become a popular song until the Civil War, when The Order of the Star Spangled Banner brought it some notoriety. The OSSB was an oath-bound secret society in NYC. It was created in 1848 by Charles Allen to protest the rise of Irish Catholic and German immigration to the United States . In order to join the Order, a man had to be a Protestant, a believer in God, and willing to obey the Order's dictates without question. Members responded to questions about the OSSB by claiming that they "knew nothing." So Horace Greeley labeled them "Know-Nothings." The OSSB would eventually form the nucleus of the nativist American Party.
Peter King might be proud reviving Know-Nothingism, but nobody tell King he can hear the National Anthem sung in Irish on the internet, the silly will become apoplectic.
Michael O'Neill
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Michael O'Neill is the chair of the East Hampton Town Anti-Bias Task Force. He can be reached at leoneill@optonline.net
